In 1999 one of the best (and perhaps strangest) science fiction films premiered in theaters. That film of course is The Matrix.

The film itself was visually stunning, it’s fight screens were so awesome that other films have duplicated the same style in their fight scenes, and it had that was really unique story line… and made anyone who watched the film not sleep for a few days.

The film itself also had multiple concepts in it that many conspiracy theorists tend to use in their beliefs.

In fact many concepts from the film have either inspired conspiracy theorists in their and terminology and their beliefs, or were inspired by conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, such as:

The world as we know it is a lie.

The first concept in “The Matrix” that many conspiracy theorists hold near and dear to them is that the world as we know it is just one giant lie, and that everything we know is fake and intentionally constructed in order to fool the masses.

In the movie Neo is told that the world is a lie, and is eventually shown that the whole world that he knew is a computer generated simulation. While most conspiracy theorist don’t go as far to say that our world is a computer generated simulation (although some do) many do think that everything we know is just one well constructed lie, and that all of our history has been guided and constructed by some force that we don’t know about.

Only people who “wake up” can know the “truth”.

In the movie Neo is told that in order to know the truth about the world that he would basically have to “wake up”, which is something that conspiracy theorists tell people all the time that they need to do (especially when they express doubt in the conspiracy theorist’s claims).

Whether the concept of “waking up” came from the movie or not, anytime one argues with a conspiracy theorist (especially on the internet) often the conspiracy theorist will tell the person to WAKE UP to the “truth” (whatever that may be for the conspiracy theorist).

People must choose if they are to “wake up” or not.

Half way through the movie Neo is given a choice about whether he wants to find out what the Matrix is in the infamous “blue pill, red pill” screen. In the screen Neo is given the choice of taking a blue pill and continuing life as he knows it, or taking the red pill and finding out the truth about the world.

This screen is so infamous that many conspiracy theorists now commonly reference to the blue pill and red pill when trying to convince someone that the conspiracy theory that they are promoting is real, and that the only way that the average person can learn about what is really going on in the world (at least from the conspiracy theorist perspective) is that they must “choose” to “take the red pill”, or that they must choose to “wake up”.

If you were going to write down the most frightening infectious diseases you could think of, measles probably wouldn’t be near the top of your list. Compared with the devastation of HIV/AIDS or the gruesome deaths caused by hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola, measles, with its four-day-long fevers and pervasive rashes, seems like nothing more than an annoyance.

But there is one thing that makes measles unique, and uniquely frightening to public health officials: It is the most infectious microbe in the world, with a transmission rate of around 90 percent. The fact that measles can live outside the human body for up to two hours makes a potential outbreak all the more menacing.

This explains the all-hands-on-deck response when officials with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health learned in late August that two unconnected patients — an infant who’d recently arrived in the United States and a foreign-born adult who’d recently traveled abroad — had visited area hospitals with active measles infections. Identifying the hundreds of people who’d potentially been exposed and then checking their vaccination status required, in the words of Dr. Larry Madoff, director of the state’s Division of Epidemiology and Immunization, a “huge effort” on the part of dozens of state, local, and hospital employees.

Fortunately, there were no secondary infections this time around, a fact that is due in no small part to the impressive vaccine uptake rate in this state. It would be a mistake to assume this will always be the case: Massachusetts is seeing a surge in the number of unvaccinated children. Last year, nearly 1,200 kids entered kindergarten with religious or philosophical vaccine exemptions, roughly double the total about a decade ago.

That mirrors what’s happening across the country. What’s so confounding is that many of the parents requesting exemptions for their children cite specious, disproven fears — such as that the vaccine could cause autism — many of which were based on a fraudulent, retracted study or fringe research published in non-peer-reviewed journals.

In 1939, Semyon Kirlian discovered by accident that if an object on a photographic plate is subjected to a high-voltage electric field, an image is created on the plate. The image looks like a colored halo or coronal discharge. This image is said to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual aura or “life force” which allegedly surrounds each living thing.

Allegedly, this special method of “photographing” objects is a gateway to the paranormal world of auras. Actually, what is recorded is due to quite natural phenomena such as pressure, electrical grounding, humidity and temperature. Changes in moisture (which may reflect changes in emotions), barometric pressure, and voltage, among other things, will produce different ‘auras’.

Living things…are moist. When the electricity enters the living object, it produces an area of gas ionization around the photographed object, assuming moisture is present on the object. This moisture is transferred from the subject to the emulsion surface of the photographic film and causes an alternation of the electric charge pattern on the film. If a photograph is taken in a vacuum, where no ionized gas is present, no Kirlian image appears. If the Kirlian image were due to some paranormal fundamental living energy field, it should not disappear in a simple vacuum (Hines 2003).

There have even been claims of electrophotography being able to capture “phantom limbs,” e.g., when a leaf is placed on the plate and then torn in half and “photographed,” the whole leaf shows up in the picture. This is not due to paranormal forces, however, but to fraud or to residues left from the initial impression of the whole leaf.

Parapsychologist Thelma Moss popularized Kirlian photography as a diagnostic medical tool with her books The Body Electric (1979) and The Probability of the Impossible (1983). She was convinced that the Kirlian process was an open door to the “bioenergy” of the astral body. Moss came to UCLA in mid-life and earned a doctorate in psychology. She experimented with and praised the effects of LSD and was in and out of therapy for a variety of psychological problems, but managed to overcome her personal travails and become a professor at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. Her studies focused on paranormal topics, such as auras, levitation and ghosts. One of her favorite subjects at UCLA was Uri Geller, whom she “photographed” several times. She even made several trips to the Soviet Union to consult with her paranormal colleagues. Moss died in 1997 at the age of 78.

Moss paved the way for other parapsychologists to speculate that Kirlian “photography” was parapsychology’s Rosetta stone. They would now be able to understand such things as acupuncture, chi, orgone energy,telepathy, etc., as well as diagnose and cure whatever ails us. [new] For example, bio-electrography claims to be:

…a method of investigation for biological objects, based on the interpretation of the corona-discharge image obtained during exposure to a high-frequency, high-voltage electromagnetic field which is recorded either on photopaper or by modern video recording equipment. Its main use is as a fast, inexpensive and relatively non-invasive means for the diagnostic evaluation of physiological and psychological states. [from the now-defunct http://www.psy.aau.dk/bioelec/]

There is even a bioresonant clothing line that has emerged from the “study” of bio-electrography; it’s allegedly based on “an astonishing new theory in bio-physics: that the information exchange in human consciousness can be directly influenced and enhanced by vibrations of Light [sic], that we call colors.”

Initial Notes: This post contains graphs of running trends in global surface temperature anomalies for periods of 12+ and 16+ years using the NCDC Global (Land and Ocean) Surface Temperature data. They indicate that we have not seen a warming hiatus this long since the 1970s.

Much of the following text is boilerplate. It is intended for those new to the presentation of global surface…

Over the weekend, members of the al-Qaeda terrorist cell known as Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen stormed into the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya and murdered at least 68 men, women and children in cold blood. The cell, more commonly known as al-Shabaab or the “Youth,” claim to have conducted the attack in retaliation against Kenya for its military presence in neighboring Somalia, while also attempting to provoke a violent response from Kenya against ethnic Somalis.

It’s just the kind of horrifyingly tragic event that’s totally ripe to be trivialized by another Alex Jones “false flag” conspiracy theory. But this time, instead of just off-handedly labeling it a false flag to distract from another previous false flag, Jones, on his Monday broadcast, went into breathless detail about how it all went down with President Obama pulling the strings.

Of course.

Because Obama is Kenyan.

Get it?

Leading up to the discussion about the Westgate terrorist attack, Jones ranted, seemingly at random and incongruously linking each topic sentence-to-sentence, about the following: torture; NSA and CIA spying on him personally; Prince Bandar gave chemical weapons to al-Qaeda rebels in Syria; Dan Bidondi uncovered a massive conspiracy while attending three Navy Yard press conferences; terrorists might try to kill Jones; we need to pray for InfoWars because it’s “dead center in the middle of world events”; Saudis stealing your cameras; the government wants to take our guns; the “out of control” security services in America are “threatening members of the press”; and Ron Paul referring to the Syrian chemical weapons attack as a false flag (he really did). All of this within the span of about 24 minutes. In the midst of this syllabus of madness, Jones said, “We get what’s going on.” The psychosis of the conspiracy theorist: only they know the truth about how the world works.

So it goes with the attack in Nairobi.

The centerpiece of his freshly minted al-Shabaab conspiracy theory? The U.S. government runs al-Qaeda. Not maybe. It absolutely does run al-Qaeda. He knows this because it was printed using actual English words on pieces of paper scattered on his radio console. The very fact that his conspiracy theories are printed on paper makes them real, you see, real enough for him to wave them around on his show while rattling off various Texas-twanged, strep-throated word salads featuring every imaginable paranoiac shibboleth.

Gary Webb was a journalist who alleged that the CIA allowed Nicaraguan Contras to smuggle huge amounts of cocaine into LA as a way to fund wars in their home country. His claims were criticized or ignored, and eventually he committed suicide — or did he?

WEST PALM BEACH (FL) — Even before the jury’s first guilty verdict was read, stifled sobs filled the courtroom. As the clerk repeated “guilty” 14 times, the quiet sobbing crescendoed.

“Psychic” Rose Marks turned to members of her family and put a finger to her lips, telling them to hush.

But it didn’t help.

Seeing the 62-year-old matriarch convicted of 14 fraud-related charges and immediately slapped in handcuffs on Thursday was too much for family members who were part of and benefited from the multi-million-dollar fortune-telling business that collapsed under the weight of a federal investigation.

Some reached out, trying to touch her. One threw a Bible. One called out to the lead investigator, mocking him. When they realized their beloved mother, grandmother and sister was about to walk through an open door and be taken to jail, shouts rang out.

The emotional end to the monthlong trial was not as unexpected as the verdict. When the trial began, cynics scoffed at the notion that a psychic could be charged with separating a fool and his money.

But, prosecutors methodically built a case, showing how Marks, her daughters-in-law and even her granddaughter preyed on broken people who came to their storefronts in midtown Manhattan and Fort Lauderdale to deal with tragedies life had handed them. Instead of solace or guidance, they told clients the only way out was to give them money — lots of it — with the promise it would one day be returned. Instead, the psychics amassed a roughly $25 million fortune.

“I’ll be the voice of the victims. Justice has been served,” said Charles Stack, who began what appeared to be a quixotic investigation in 2008 before he retired from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department.

Savvy consumers have learned over the years that the primary goal of marketing is to create demand for a product or service. This has risen to the point of inventing problems that do not really exist just to sell a product that addresses the fake problem. Who knew that my social status could be destroyed by spotty glassware.

Osteopenia is a relative decrease in bone density, but not enough to qualify for osteoporosis.

Better yet, if you can make people worry about a nonexistent problem, something that they were not previously aware of and don’t understand, they might buy your solution just to relieve their worry.

This type of “artificial demand” marketing can be very insidious when it occurs with medical products and services. The pharmaceutical industry has been accused of generating artificial demand for some of their drugs. For example, osteopenia is a relative decrease in bone density, but not enough to qualify for osteoporosis. Osteopenia is not really a disease, or even necessarily a mild version of osteoporosis, although it is a risk factor. Merck, however, was happy to broaden the market for its drug for osteoporosis and argue that patients with osteopenia should be treated also, even though the evidence really did not support this.

I don’t think the pharmaceutical industry invents new diseases. It seems that they do try to extend the market for their drugs into milder and milder indications, spreading into the gray zone of evidence, but they don’t get to invent their own diseases.

Those who practice medicine outside the constraints imposed by science (and ethics), however, are not above inventing imaginary diseases and conditions out of whole cloth.

Candida

Could it be Candida?

One popular fake illness is chronic candidiasis. Candida albicans is a fungus that colonizes about 90% of the population (meaning it is present in the body but not causing an infection or any problems). It can, however, become an infection, usually at times of stress or immunocompromise. The most common manifestations are thrush (a superficial Candida infection in the mouth) and vaginitis, also commonly referred to as a yeast infection.

Candida can also rarely cause serious systemic infection, but this is mostly restricted to those with compromised immune systems, such as patients undergoing chemotherapy or with advanced AIDS.

Candida became the focus of a fake illness beginning in 1986 with the publication of . . .

It was a foggy Sunday morning in San Francisco, in August of 1942. The United States was at war with Japan, and coastal defenses along the western coast of the US remained on high alert for prowling Japanese submarines. A daily chore in San Francisco was a sortie by a naval blimp to look for subs outside San Francisco Bay. Today’s flight of the L-8 started no differently, but the way it ended has kept people talking for more than 70 years.

Unlike a rigid airship, a blimp is just an inflated bag with no structure to help it keeps its shape. Only a few hours after it left, the craft was seen drifting in from the ocean, sagging terribly into a V-shape. Some swimmers at the beach tried to grab it by its hanging control lines but failed. It bounced up the cliff side — dangerously dislodging one of its depth charges and stopping both its engines in the process — and continued its aimless drifting over the San Francisco peninsula. Soon it became entangled in some power lines and finally came to rest in the middle of an intersection in Daly City. As bystanders ran to help, the mystery became immediately evident: there was nobody on board.

The obvious suggestions came right away. Perhaps the men fell out. Perhaps they jumped out, either to commit suicide or to go AWOL. Maybe they got in a fight and threw each other out. Maybe one fell, and the other also lost his grip trying to help him. Maybe they had found a Japanese sub, and were forced to jump out at gunpoint. Nobody could really come up with any better guesses than these, and still to this day, the Navy hasn’t either.

Located off the coast of India, North Sentinel Island is a distrubing anomaly. Mysterious people live on it, but all attempts to contact them have gone disastrously wrong, and they attack any outsiders with unparalleled ferocity. So what’s going on at the island? Tune in to learn more.

The trails which arouse the most suspicion are those that remain visiblefor a long time – like those in this photo from a 1957 air show. (Photo: MetaBunk)

The seemingly random appearance of “contrails”, as these lines of condensation are commonly called, is considered by a small but vocal online minority to be evidence of government conspiracy. The clouds are, according to some, in fact “chemtrails” – chemical or biological agents sprayed at high altitude for any number of top secret reasons.

So persistent is the chemtrail theory that US government agencies regularly receive calls from irate citizens demanding an explanation. Pernilla Hagberg, the leader of Sweden’s Green Party, even raised the issue in parliament. The trails which arouse the most suspicion are those that remain visible for a long time, dispersing into cirrus-like cloud formations, or those from multiple aircraft which form a persistent noughts-and-crosses-style grid over a large area.

So what possible reason would the world’s governments have for secretly jettisoning vast quantities of chemicals into the stratosphere?

The conspiracy theory took root in the Nineties, with the publication of a US Air Force research paper about weather modification. The ability to change the weather isn’t mere pie-in-the-sky. Cloud seeding – where particles such as silver oxide are sprayed onto clouds to increase precipitation – is commonly used by drought-prone countries, and was part of the Chinese government’s efforts to reduce pollution ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Other proponents of the “chemtrails” theory say it is an attempt to control global warming, while some cite far more sinister goals, such as population control and military weapons testing.

Governments and scientific institutions have of course dismissed the theories, and claim those vapour trails which persist for longer than usual, or disperse to cover a wide area, are just normal contrails. The variety of contrails seen in the sky is due to atmospheric conditions and altitude, they say, while grid-like contrails are merely a result of the large number of planes that travel along the same well-worn flight lanes.

Following on the heels of my post yesterday regarding how much smarter and saner the conspiracy theorists are than us skeptics, today we will take a look at: homeopathic anti-chemtrail spray.

Yes, folks, guaranteed to “alleviate symptoms of chemtrail exposure,” this homeopathic preparation (i.e. a bottle of water) is to be sprayed up the nose “until symptoms disappear.”

At first, I thought this had to be a joke. Or, at least, unique. Surely no one else would come up with the idea of using worthless remedies for nonexistent chemtrail exposure.

I was wrong.

Check out, for example, ChemBuster. The website starts out by asking a very important question, namely: “Have you experienced symptoms of unknown origin?” Because if you had “chronic fatigue,” “chronic pain,” “chronic headaches,” or “mental and emotional problems,” there could only be one answer:

The government is putting chemicals into jet fuel, so that when the jet fuel is burned, the chemicals are dispersed over the unsuspecting citizenry, where they are inhaled and cause you to feel crummy.

So who you gonna call? ChemBuster!

ChemBuster contains 4 herbals and 9 homeopathics blended in a proprietary process designed to defeat, to annihilate, the pools of mycoplasma, heavy metals, respiratory problems and even mental problems associated with Chemtrail poisoning.

But ChemBuster has to be “activated” before use. How do you activate it? By purchasing an “orgone energy generator,” setting the bottle next to it, and turning it on, which will “potentiate” it, increasing its strength by a factor of ten (following the mathematical principle that 10 x 0 = 0).

At this point, I should mention that the “orgone energy generator” uses the power of gemstones to “collect, concentrate, transmute and radiate all ambient subtle energy into life force,” and that the person who came up with the idea of “orgone,” Wilhelm Reich, believed that it was the “life energy” that was released suddenly during an orgasm. I’m not making this up, by the way. So here we have a claim that combines four ridiculous ideas — homeopathy + chemtrails + gemstone energies + orgone.

Which may be a new record.

Now, if you don’t want to buy homeopathic remedies and orgone energy generators to combat chemtrails, there could be a cheaper solution, namely: a spray bottle filled with vinegar. Once again, I feel obliged to state outright that I’m not making this up. Last year, we had a claim going around that was given some momentum by such pinnacles of rationality as Alex Jones and Jeff Rense, stating that if you were worried about the government dousing you with chemicals, all you had to do to “cleanse the air” was to spray some vinegar up toward the sky. So people did it, because of course there never is an idea so completely idiotic that there won’t be large quantities of people who will believe it.

What it really is:Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst is the provider of full spectrum support for aircraft launch, recovery and support equipment systems for U.S. and allied Naval Aviation Forces at sea and Marine Corps Expeditionary Aviation Forces ashore.

The base was also the site of the Navy’s lighter than air programs (i.e. airships, blimps) and still contains two huge hangers that once housed airships.

What it really is:Earle Naval Weapons Station is a Navy Base with a near 3 mile long pier that is used to load and unload ammunition from warships a safe distance away from the heavily populated areas that surround the base.

Also I imagine the site attracts a lot of site seers as well due to the fact that the base has such a huge pier.

What it really is:Pease Air National Guard base is a former Air Force base that was taken over by the New Hampshire Air National Guard in 1991 after Air Force closed the base. The base is also the site of a civilian airport and commercial center called the Pease International Tradeport.

What it really is:Whiteman Air Force Base is home 509th Bomb Wing, a bomber wing that operates the the B-2, so it’s entirely possible the base has some gravity bombs located on site.As for the 10,000 sq. mile missile field, this one is false. Such a field would be HUGE, and the base itself is surrounded by a state park to the west, the town of Knob Noster to the north, and farm land to the south and east, not to mention public roads.

Also, looking at this base via Google maps, I can see nothing there that resembles a prison camp.

What it really is: The Kansas City Plant (now known as Bannister Federal Complex) produces 85% of the non-nuclear materials used in the nation’s nuclear arsenal, as well as other non-nuclear components for the United States national defense systems.

Besides manufacturing, the Kansas City Plant also provides technical services for testing and analyzing of certain things, such as metallurgical/mechanical analysis and environmental testing.

When examining claims and deciding whether to believe one, there are many things to consider. Evidence is a must. You can’t simply assert something without basis and expect it to be believed. But we do this every day. When we talk about mundane day to day happening with people, we’re making a lot of claims and we usually take them at face value without scrutinizing them. Isn’t this believing in stuff without evidence?

No. We are taking into account the evidence. We’re just doing it so quickly that we don’t even realize it. The biggest piece of evidence, and maybe even the only one in a lot of cases is the person’s eyewitness credibility. Generally, people are pretty truthful. We are using our previous experience with people as evidence for this. We’re also using our direct previous experious with the individual we are talking to further build a case for…

THE GIST

The make a wish on a turkey bone saying dates back to first-century Romans.

The word friggatriskaidekaphobics describes those afraid of Friday the 13th.

If you are spooked by Friday the 13th, you’re in for a whammy of a year. And it would come as no surprise if many among us hold at least some fear of freaky Friday, as we humans are a superstitious lot.

Many superstitions stem from the same human trait that causes us to believe in monsters and ghosts: When our brains can’t explain something, we make stuff up. In fact, a 2010 study found that superstitions can sometimes work, because believing in something can improve performance on a task.

Here, then, are 13 of the most common superstitions.

13. Beginner’s luck

Usually grumbled by an expert who just lost a game to a novice, “beginner’s luck” is the idea that newbies are unusually likely to win when they try out a sport, game or activity for the first time.

Beginners might come out ahead in some cases because the novice is less stressed out about winning. Too much anxiety, after all, can hamper performance. Or it could just be a statistical fluke, especially in chance-based gambling games.

Or, like many superstitions, a belief in beginner’s luck might arise because of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is a psychological phenomenon in which people are more likely to remember events that fit their worldview. If you believe you’re going to win because you’re a beginner, you’re more likely to remember all the times you were right — “and forget the times you ended up in last place.

12. Find a penny, pick it up . . .

And all day long, you’ll have good luck. This little ditty may arise because finding money is lucky in and of itself. But it might also be a spin-off of another old rhyme, “See a pin, pick it up/ and all day long you’ll have good luck/ See a pin, let it lay/ and your luck will pass y.”

11. Don’t walk under that ladder!

Frankly, this superstition is pretty practical. Who wants to be responsible for stumbling and knocking a carpenter off his perch? But one theory holds that this superstition arises from a Christian belief in the Holy Trinity: Since a ladder leaning against a wall forms a triangle, “breaking” that triangle was blasphemous.

Then again, another popular theory is that a fear of walking under a ladder has to do with its resemblance to a medieval gallows. We’re sticking with the safety-first explanation for this one.

10. Black cats crossing your path

As companion animals for humans for thousands of years, cats play all sorts of mythological roles. In ancient Egypt, cats were revered; today, Americans collectively keep more than 81 million cats as pets.

So why keep a black cat out of your path? Most likely, this superstition arises from old beliefs in witches and their animal familiars, which were often said to take the form of domestic animals like cats.

9. A rabbit’s foot will bring you luck

Talismans and amulets are a time-honored way of fending off evil; consider the crosses and garlic that are supposed to keep vampires at bay. Rabbit feet as talismans may hark back to early Celtic tribes in Britain. They may also arise from hoodoo, a form of African-American folk magic and superstition that blends Native American, European and African tradition. [Rumor or Reality: The Creatures of Cryptozoology]

8. Bad luck comes in threes

Remember confirmation bias? The belief that bad luck comes in threes is a classic example. A couple things go wrong, and believers may start to look for the next bit of bad luck. A lost shoe might be forgotten one day, but seen as the third in a series of bad breaks the next.

Like this:

There’s an old story that tells of how the famous escape-artist and magician Harry Houdini once offered to prove to the legendary (and apparently gullible) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that ghosts weren’t real, and that alleged spiritual mediums were actually frauds. Houdini embarked on a quest to demystify and unveil the tricks behind the spiritualists of his day. He showed how pretty much everything they claimed to be able to do could be replicated by people with the same know-how, and he then demanded to know how anyone could continue to believe in ghosts. Doyle not only continued to believe, but by all accounts his friendship with Houdini ended and the two became bitter public antagonists.

The story is largely true. Houdini – and many, many magicians afterwards – devoted a great deal of time to exposing spiritualist frauds and other con artists. It could be said that ‘debunking’ has…

It’s a multi-billion dollar scam industry that millions of people around the world use the products and services of year after year.

Many people who use alternative medicine will say it works, while many, many others will say otherwise.

Now there are a lot of things that I have notice about alternative medicine, but I have narrowed it down to five different things.

So here are five things I’ve noticed about alternative medicine:

5. It has a lot to do about nothing.

Alternative medicine products and services basically comes in two different forms: does nothing and uses nothing.

Most alternative medicine just doesn’t work at all (such as homeopathy), and the few that actually does do something, the effects are minor and no where near as effective as real medicine, and could even be harmful if done improperly.

Then there are some that not only does nothing, but uses nothing as well. Reiki healing is a prime example of this as practitioners of Reiki healing practitioners claim that they use “energy” from some unknown source to “heal” people. Sometimes they will use crystals to harness this power. Sometimes they’ll just use their hands. Regardless of how they “harness” this energy, they all do the same thing: nothing.

Some of the best “evidence” that practitioners of alternative medicine have about how effect the products and services they offer works is anecdotal evidence. In fact it’s not just best evidence they can give, it’s also often the only evidence they can ever give (besides the stuff they make up) mainly because scientific experimentation and testing have proven that their products and services are useless.

Most practitioners of alternative medicine will tell you that their products and services does make people feel better, what they often don’t tell you is how long it took to fix or cure whatever was ailing those who used their products or services, or whether they were using real medicine and medical services along with the alternative medicine, or how many people it didn’t work for and ended up having to go and get real medicine and medical services when the alternative medicine failed to cure any thing but perhaps a heavy wallet. And that’s another thing about alternative medicine…

3. It gets expensive.

Some alternative medicine is cheap (or at least it seems that way) but a lot of it is either over priced and even cost to much for some to use (which can be a good thing in a way, because the expense forces that person to go get real medicine). Even for people with health insurance it can still get expensive because most health insurance companies will not pay for alternative medicine, so a person who wants to use alternative medicine will have to pay for it out of pocket.

Even for the alternative medicine that isn’t expensive, and can still get expensive because . . .

The IPCC has announced (via a “leak” campaign only to selected media outlets, such as Reuters, NYT, WaPo) that they are now 95% certain. From Reuters:

Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the U.N. panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.

Conspiracy theories are tempting. There is something especially charming about a forged moon landing or government-backed assassination. Christopher Hitchens called them “the exhaust fumes of democracy.” Maybe he’s right: cognitive biases, after all, feast on easy access to information and free speech.

Leon Festinger carried out the first empirical study of conspiracy theorists. In 1954 the Stanford social psychologist infiltrated a UFO cult that was convinced the world would end on December 20th. In his book When Prophecy Fails, Festinger recounts how after midnight came and went, the leader of the cult, Marian Keech, explained to her members that she received a message from automatic writing telling her that the God of Earth decided to spare the planet from destruction. Relieved, the cult members continued to spread their doomsday ideology.

Festinger coined the term cognitive dissonance to describe the psychological consequences of disconfirmed expectations. It is a “state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent,” as two authors describe it, “the more committed we are to a belief, the harder it is to relinquish, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence.”

Smokers are another a good example; they smoke even though they know it kills. And after unsuccessfully quitting, they tend to say that, “smoking isn’t that bad,” or that, “it’s worth the risk.” In a related example doctors who preformed placebo surgeries on patients with osteoarthritis of the knee “found that patients who had ‘sham’ arthroscopic surgery reported as much relief… as patients who actually underwent the procedure.” Many patients continued to report dramatic improvement even after surgeons told them the truth.

A recent experiment by Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton reminds us that holding inconsistent beliefs is more the norm than the exception. The researchers found that “mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement.” Many subjects, for example, believed Princess Diana faked her own death and was killed by a rogue cell of British Intelligence, or that the death of Osama bin Laden was a cover-up and that he is still alive. The authors conclude that many participants showed “a willingness to consider and even endorse mutually contradictory accounts as long as they stand in opposition to the officially sanctioned narrative.”

Of all the people who have been associated with the weird form of science-denial that claims vaccines cause autism, Jenny McCarthy is the most famous. She has been the effective national face of the movement, appearing at many rallies (sometimes with her former beau, Jim Carrey), loudly shouting down people with actual medical expertise on Larry King Live, and making numerous appearances on the TV circuit, including Oprah and many other high-profile shows. Her name is so prominent as the “leader” of the anti-vaxxers that the site cataloguing the number of new infections and deaths due to diseases preventable by vaccination is known as “JennyMcCarthyBodyCount.com.”

I discussed the entire anti-vaxx movement in my new book, Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future. The anti-vaxxers are one of the most serious threats to society, since they are causing the revival of many once-conquered diseases, which are infecting and killing hundreds of innocent children. Some of these child victims had parents who support vaccination, but (since they cannot vaccinate very young kids) these babies and toddlers are infected by an anti-vaxxer’s older kids who are not inoculated. As McCarthy prepares to take her seat on the most watched show on daytime TV, The View, people from across the political spectrum decried this as a truly bad move, because it gives the stamp of approval to the foremost leader of a lethal anti-science movement. As I argued in a previous post, it is comparable to putting the leader of some other science-denial movement, such as AIDS denierPeter Duesberg, or creationist minister Ken Ham or Ray Comfort, or Holocaust denier David Irving, in the panel of the most watched show on daytime TV.

Throughout her attacks on vaccination and her attempts to blame her son’s autism on vaccines, she has called the vaccines “toxins” and “poison”, and claims she has only followed “healthy” practices since her son’s autism became apparent (although most experts think her son is not autistic, but has Landau-Kleffner syndrome). Instead of vaccination, she has listened to an array of quack doctors and used a bunch of dangerous, unproven “therapies”, including chelation therapy, which most doctors regard as a quack therapy much more dangerous than vaccines. She has led a crusade for “Green our Vaccines” and claimed she wants to be advocate for healthy practices and against “toxins” in your body.

Well, guess who is now the paid spokesmodel for the latest dangerous fad, eCigarettes? Would it surprise you to find out that it is the same Jenny McCarthy?

A new study has found that people who believe that psychics can predict the future tend to feel more in control of their lives than those who don’t.

A group of Australian researchers from the University of Queensland led by Katharine Greenaway offered the hypothesis that belief in psychic prediction would be positively correlated with a sense of control over one’s life.

“If it is possible to predict what the future holds, then one can exert control,” the study reports. “Having insight into what will happen in the future would therefore allow people to control their outcomes in a way that would guarantee personal success and survival.”

Several experiments were done to examine this phenomenon. In one of them, two groups of people were asked to read passages either promoting or disputing the idea that scientists have found evidence of precognitive psychic powers.

Afterwards, each group was asked to rate how much they agreed or disagreed with statements about how much control they feel they have over their lives and circumstances.

Those who read the information confirming the existence of psychic powers agreed more strongly with statements such as “I am in control of my own life” and “My life is determined by my own actions” than those in the other group.

The Psychology of Prediction

What’s behind this psychology of prediction? Humans are a pattern-seeking species, and we constantly look for ways to make sense of the world around us. Many superstitious people, for example, find — or, more accurately, believe they find — ways of knowing and even influencing the future. Gamblers may wear a lucky shirt to a casino, for example, or an athlete might perform a small ritual before a game to assure good luck.

You are not special, the stars and planets decided that at your birth. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake, as Tyler Durden might say. In fact, all your complexities and quirks, your desires and passions, everything you have done or will do fits neatly into what looks like a twelve-slice pie chart laden with calligraphy. A snowflake you are not if astrology were true.

Despite what your mother may have told you, if astrology were true there would be at least hundreds of thousands of people who share in your uniqueness. Indeed, if astrologers could determine your personality and future from your hour and date of birth, there would be 8,760 different combinations available. With 7.1 billion people on the planet this means around 810,000 people would each receive your exact horoscope, your wisdom from the wandering planets above, your future. Human psychology may be broken up into general personality traits, but astrology breaks up human life into less possible variations than the combinations of a 2x2x2 Rubik’s Cube.

If astrology were true, society would fracture. Over time we would learn what days of the year gave rise to what kinds of people. Like parents who want their children to become professional hockey players, mothers would calculate conception and birthing times in order to give their son or daughter a particular star sign. Pharmaceutical companies would make a killing developing the drugs that allowed mothers to delay and control births more effectively. Being born into a specific astrological sign would create grand social rifts. Different schools would spring up as they did for different religions in twentieth century Ireland. Potential mates would need not only good looks but also descendants who shared the same sign. Libras and Aries would be the modern Capulets and Montagues.

Studies would be undertaken to establish the psychology determined by stars and planets. The zodiac would replace Myers Briggs. Modern descriptions of psychopathy would include “being a Gemini” as a defining symptom. The Diagnostic and Statistics Manual cites Mercury as much as it does brain chemistry in a world where astrology is true.

Political parties would also incorporate star signs. Candidates run on the basis of how compatible they are with Cancers and Leos—perhaps key demographics. The Speaker of the House would need to be in the astrological 10th House. And when faraway stars eventually shift enough to change star signs, revolutions follow. A new type of human would enter the mix every few centuries. The status quo would be forever challenged by the whims of gravity.

A few months ago I did one of these “5 Things I’ve noticed about…” articles on the people in the 9/11 Truth Movement, and it had me thinking to myself “what about the conspiracy theories that the people in the 9/11 Truth Movements promote?”

So what about those conspiracy theories, and what are some of the biggest things about them that just stand out? Well, I’ve noticed a lot of things about them, and I’ve narrowed them down to five different things.

So here are five things I’ve noticed about 9/11 conspiracy theories:

5. There are a lot of them.

Probably one of the biggest problems with the 9/11 conspiracy theories is that there are more than one of them, instead of just one that the people who believe in and focus on.

For some people these can be confusing not only because they are all very different, but they are mostly not even connected to one another.

Not only can they be confusing, but they are also progressively more bizarre as well.

There is the let it happen theory, the controlled demolition theory, the drone plane theory, the nuke theory, and even the no plane/space lasers (which is so bizarre a person in the 9/11 Truth Movement debunked it).

I guess you say that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are a lot like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories in that not only are there more than one theory to what happened, but also because…

4. There is apparently more than one perpetrator.

Besides there just being more than one 9/11 conspiracy theory, according to these conspiracy theories, there is no solid conclusion on who the “real” perpetrator is.

Some people claim that it was Al-Qaida, it’s just that those in the government allowed them to attack. Some people say that it was a collaboration between the government and Al-Qaida. Some people believe it was just the government, or Israel, or the Illuminati, or someone else entirely.

It just seems like none of these conspiracy theorists who claim that 9/11 was an inside job can agree upon who did it, and how they did it. Of course that isn’t very surprising to me, because…

They are of course not the only one’s who promote the 9/11 conspiracy theories, but they are some of the biggest ones, and many of the other promoters of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are just as nutty (or possibly fraudulent) as these guys.

Unlucky? Or just bad parking skills? The scene in 1933 after a car had run away, driverless, rolled 50 feet down a hillside to a retaining wall and became jammed against a two-story brick home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

There’s Violet Jessop, who worked as a stewardess on the maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912, and managed to survive the giant liner’s collision in the North Atlantic with an iceberg — only to take a job as a nurse on the Britannic, which sank in 1916 in the Aegean Sea.

And more recently, there’s the bizarre story of English tourists Jason and Jenny Cairns-Lawrence, who were visiting New York City when Al Qaeda hijackers crashed two planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and happened to be in London when the city’s public transportation system was attacked by terrorists in July 2005, and traveled to Mumbai, India in November 2008, just in time to witness a third terrorist attack.

Newspaper writers took to calling them “the world’s unluckiest couple.”

The idea that some people are destined to suffer chronic misfortune is so ingrained in our consciousness that there even have been songs written about it — for example, “Born Under a Bad Sign,” the blues classic recorded by Albert King back in 1967, in which the narrator complains that “if it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”

But is there really such a thing as chronic bad luck, and if so, why do some people seem to be plagued by it?

Psychologists and academic experts in probability and statistics, who’ve studied the phenomenon of bad luck, provide a complicated answer. It is true that in the course of a lifetime, some people have a lot more bad things happen to them than most of us do. But that outcome can be influenced by a variety of factors, including random chance, the actions of other people, and individuals’ own decision-making skills and competence at performing tasks.

But in our minds, it all blends together and forms this thing that we think of as bad luck.

Rami Zwick, a business professor at the University of California-Riverside, points out that the idea of bad luck exists, in part, because most of us don’t have a very good understanding of how the science of probability works.

“There is a difference between individual and aggregate experiences of people in a population,” he explains. If you ask 100 people to flip a coin 100 times, for example, over time, you can expect that the average result for the group will be 50 heads and 50 tails. But within the group, individuals may have more heads than tails, or vice-versa. “If we think of heads as good and tails as bad, a few people will have a sequence of mostly good outcomes, and others will have mostly bad ones.”

Their website hurts your eyes (I’m not going to link to it). This may seem like an odd thing to note, but there does seem to be a correlation between pseudoscientific websites and poor website design. Someone should do a study.

Like this:

After months of careful research and endless filming, I am delighted to bring you the eighth instalment of the Quirkology bets series – here are another 10 bets that you will always win (along with a hidden URL to a secret bet). Which is your favourite one?

THE GIST

Believing in the paranormal is actually more normal than you might think and may be growing more common.

Contrary to common stereotypes, there is no single profile of a person who accepts the paranormal.

It might be in our nature to look for patterns and meaning in strange and random events.

It’s that time of year again. Ghosts, goblins and other spooky characters come out from the shadows and into our everyday lives.

For most people, the thrill lasts for a few weeks each October. But for true believers, the paranormal is an everyday fact, not just a holiday joke.

To understand what drives some people to truly believe, two sociologists visited psychic fairs, spent nights in haunted houses, trekked with Bigfoot hunters, sat in on support groups for people who had been abducted by aliens, and conducted two nationwide surveys.

Contrary to common stereotypes, the research revealed no single profile of a person who accepts the paranormal. Believers ranged from free-spirited types with low incomes and little education to high-powered businessmen. Some were drifters; others were brain surgeons.

Why people believed also varied, the researchers report in a new book, called “ParanormalAmerica: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture.”

For some, the paranormal served as just another way of explaining the world. For others, extraordinary phenomena offered opportunities to chase mysteries, experience thrills and even achieve celebrity status, if they could actually find proof.

“It’s almost like an adult way to get that kidlike need for adventure and exploration,” said co-author Christopher Bader, of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. “Other people are sitting at home and renting videos, but you’re sitting in a haunted house that is infested with demons.”

“These guys who are hunting Bigfoot are out chasing a monster,” he added. “I could see the real appeal in going out for weekend and never knowing what you might find.”

There is no hard data on how common it is to believe in the paranormal, which Bader and co-author Carson Mencken define as beliefs or experiences that are not fully accepted by science or religion.

But trends in television programming offer a sense that there is a widespread interest in . . .

Tesco may be changing its stance on this highly controversial magazine. Time to act and remind them how dangerous and unacceptable this publication is.

For a year now, there has been much concern that mainstream retail outlets have been stocking and selling a magazine called What Doctors Don’t Tell You (WDDTY). Now, there are many magazines on the shelves that frequently promote superstitious and pseudoscientific forms of health belief, such as homeopathy, vitamins and reiki, but WDDTY goes way beyond most offerings. This is a magazine that plays in the mainstream and yet systematically sets out to undermine trust in medical professionals and promote nonsensical, disproven or misrepresented alternatives.

A recent example of its reporting style was dissected by Dr Matthew Lam on the Sense About Scienceblog where he describes how the magazine completely misrepresented the evidence behind Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a double mastectomy. “The variety of ways that the authors misused and abused scientific evidence and scientific language to make their claims was shocking”, said LAM. It was not a one-off. Looking through other issues there was misrepresentation and “ill-informed advice on vaccination, heart disease, arthritis, dementia, all cancers, colds, flu, HIV….the list goes on.”

In my opinion, the magazine represents a clear danger to public health in the way it systematically misrepresents evidence and presents a highly selective and skewed approach to mainstream medicine and so-called alternatives. The style of so many stories is that doctors are withholding crucial health advice, they belittle or undermine alternatives, promote drugs, or are just ignorant about ‘natural medicine’ including foods and vitamins.

With anesthetics properly given, very few patients wake up during surgery. However, new findings point to the possibility of a state of mind in which a patient is neither fully conscious nor unconscious, experts say.

This possible third state of consciousness, may be a state in which patients can respond to a command, but are not disturbed by pain or the surgery, according to Dr. Jaideep Pandit, anesthetist at St John’s College in England, who discussed the idea today (Sept. 19) at The Annual Congress of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland.

Pandit dubbed this state dysanaesthesia, and said the evidence that it exists comes partly from a recent study, in which 34 surgical patients were anesthetized, and had their whole body paralyzed except for their forearm, allowing them to move their fingers in response to commands or to signify if they are awake or in pain during surgery.

One-third of patients in the study moved their finger if they were asked to, even though they were under what seemed to be adequate anesthesia, according to the study led by Dr. Ian F. Russell, of Hull Royal Infirmary in England, and published Sept. 12 in the journal Anaesthesia.

“What’s more remarkable is that they only move their fingers if they are asked. None of the patients spontaneously responded to the surgery. They are presumably not in pain,” said Pandit, who wrote an editorial about the study.

Normally, while patients are under anesthesia, doctors continuously monitor them, and administer anesthetic drugs as needed. The goal is to ensure the patient has received adequate medication to remain deeply unconscious during surgery. However, it is debated how reliable the technologies used during surgery to “measure” unconsciousness are.

Do you know why the Washington DC Navy Yard shootings occurred? Because a false flag plot by Obama to detonate a nuclear bomb – on the anniversary of 9/11 – was uncovered by the U.S. military’s criminal investigation units and the shooting somehow thwarted Obama’s false flag nuclear plans.

Does this make sense to you? Me either. I think somebody’s tin foil hat is on their head just a wee bit too tight.

Have another round of popcorn – this time with nuts – and enjoy the crazy … :)

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt. U.S. military police were targeted and killed by Obama in the Washington DC Navy Yard shooting. Why? Agents from the U.S. military’s criminal investigation units had uncovered a plot to detonate a nuclear device in the heart of the nation’s capitol as part of an Obama government false flag. Officials from NCIS (United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service) and the U.S. Office of the Provost (both with field offices inside the Washington DC Navy Yard) had threatened to arrest Obama for planning to attacked Syria without Congressional approval following a planned nuclear detonation false flag in Washington DC. The Office of the Provost is on the second floor of Building 34, One First Avenue, Charlestown Navy Yard and NCIS is located at 716 SICARD STREET SE, SUITE 2000, WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, DC.

The United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) is the primary law enforcement agency of the United States Department of the Navy. It investigates activities concerning crimes against or by United States Navy and United States Marine Corps personnel, along with national security, counter-intelligence, and counter-terrorism cases. A false flag is the crime of treason – levying war against the United States. If United States Navy or United States Marine Corps personnel are involved in planning for and preparing a false flag event in Washington DC or anywhere else in the United States, NCIS and its agents are duty bound to investigate and take action to counter those terrorist acts against the United States.

Prior to the Washington DC Navy Yard shooting the Joint Chief of Staff and Provost Marshals were planning and preparing to arrest Obama for treason. For levying war against the United States with a planned false flag in Washington DC on the anniversary of 9/11 – a nuclear detonation.

In the United States the Office of the Provost has the authority to arrest the President if he or she violates the terms of his/her employment, or commits an act that is detrimental to the United States. He/she can be held liable, arrested, imprisoned etc., depending on the depth of the violation, by the Provost Marshal.

If it has been determined that the president of the United States has committed treason in a manner unmistakable to all, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff convenes a covert meeting . . .

When I first saw the name alone it made me think “what the heck?” Then I saw just what type of spray it was, and I went from thinking “what the heck” to “what a freaking sham!” and it made me think “can people really be this stupid?” Then I remember just how stupid of a statement that is because if people really are dumb enough (or crazy enough) to believe in chemtrails, they might just buy a spray that “detoxs” chemtrail “stuff”…

Actually it can’t offer “relief” from the effects of chemtrails because chemtrails do not exist.

There is no scientific evidence what so ever that shows that chemtrails exist, and that what conspiracy theorists believe to be chemtrails are actually just contrails and clouds. Even if they did exist they wouldn’t be effective anyways because they would be sprayed way to high up in the atmosphere to have any affect on us, not to mention the fact that there just aren’t enough planes to make such things effective on a global scale.

Also, all the claims of what chemtrails are suppose do are completely bogus as well.

“Non Chemical Homeopathic” to me is sort of redundant. The reason I say this is because homeopathic medicine is a fraud medicine that is basically just water, and doesn’t contain any chemicals in it…

It would be cheaper to fill up a spray bottle with water and spray it into your mouth than it would to buy this product. Heck it would be better to that anyways because the water in that spray bottle would be fresher than it would be in the Chemtrail Detox Spray!

The next thing the makers of this product says:

Indications for relieving a broad spectrum of chemtrail induced states including:

And those would happen to be:

sinus irritation,

Which is also a symptom of a cold or allergies.

lowered immune system,

What exactly do they mean by thiss? Could it mean “feeling icky”? There are a number of things that can make a person feel icky. Heck, being outside in the heat and sun to long can make a person feel icky. The flu can make a person feel icky.

They really need to be more specific here, because generally when I think of “lowered immune system” I think of HIV and AIDS.

Every time I hear someone repeat a conspiracy theory, it makes me question my stance on torture. Be honest, whom would you rather waterboard, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or billionaire birther Donald Trump?

Conspiracy theories allow many people to feel more in control. It’s simply more comforting to imagine some grand conspiracy was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy than to accept the fact that one lone man, Lee Harvey Oswald, was able to assassinate the leader of the free world.

A recent study at the University of Kent in England shed new light on the minds of conspiracy theorists. It found that factual details were far less important to conspiracy theorists than their belief that secret and powerful forces are controlling everything.

The study also found people who believed Osama Bin Laden is still alive were just as likely to sign on to the theory that he was already dead at the time of the raid, a sort of SchrÖdinger’s Cat approach.

I have seriously studied the Kennedy assassination since 2003 and have read a stack of books on the subject taller than I am. I’ve also made countless trips to Dealey Plaza and to the Sixth Floor Museum’s research room to educate myself further on the assassination.

During a recent trip, I overheard a gentleman saying there must have been a second shooter positioned on the grassy knoll because after the shot the president’s head snapped back and to the left. This is a common misconception.

I explained to him that, according to Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis W. Alvarez, a bullet approaching the speed of sound transfers little resistance to the head as it enters the skull. However, upon exiting, the bullet pulls with it bits of brain matter and skull fragments creating a jet blast effect that sends the head in the direction of the shooter.

His response: “That actually makes a lot of sense, but I still think there must have been a second shooter.”

Christopher Hitchens called this the “exhaust fumes of democracy,” a result of a large population with unlimited access to large amounts of information that is often wrong or misleading.

Conspiracy theories are an unfortunate, paranoid and counterfactual outgrowth of any national tragedy. But in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Navy Yard, so-called “truthers” found some hard proof that something was off: The attack happened on Sept. 16, but both ABC.com and British Columbia’s Kelowna Daily Courier published stories dated the day before.

Thousands of people, including some of the Internet’s most popular conspiracy theorists, seized on the time stamps as evidence of a vast government conspiracy to orchestrate tragedies and clamp down on gun rights in the aftermath. They have other “proof” too, of course — conjecture about “crisis actors” and John Wilkes Booth and the two rumored shooters who didn’t end up being part of Aaron Alexis’s plot. But the time stamp issue is the foundation of many of the more popular videos circulating on YouTube, Facebook and that seedy corner of the Internet where people debate the Illuminati and UFOs.

“Now we have what might be the best smoking gun evidence yet, and it is time-stamped from September 15,” rails the popular conspiracy vlogger Dahboo77 in a YouTube video that has been viewed more than 90,000 times. “These guys must have put this into the system right before midnight, right before they left the office, on the 15th. And they knew it” — “it” being the Navy Yard rampage, hours before it happened.

The reality is, of course, a little more mundane: Both sites incorrectly ingested a feed from the Associated Press, which caused their AP stories to display the wrong time stamps.

Right now a film is being cut for YouTube. Within the edit, clips from various media broadcasts of Monday’s navy yard shooting in Washington DC are being selectively stitched together. The film will start by suggesting a deception has occurred, one wrought on the American people by shadowy, unseen forces. It will distance itself from other conspiracy theory videos, purporting to show “just the facts” about the events at the naval dockyard.

The film will highlight the complicity of the media that reported on the shooting, as well as the law enforcement agencies that responded to emergency calls. “Why would they lie?” the film will ask, followed by “who would have something to gain?” The film’s creator will then place himself (or herself) at the heart of events; having personally investigated the shooting (by going through the wealth of online material available) they have uncovered “the truth” about what really happened in DC that day.

After highlighting several inconsistent facts disseminated by the news media in the hours directly after the story broke, the “official motive” of the shooter will be questioned. The film will highlight reports of three gunmen rather than one and question which firearms were used and by whom. Having exposed the “cover-up”, the naval dockyard killings will be given a grander context, linked with the 2012 shootings in Newtown and Aurora.

As the conspiracy grows, events in DC may even be given an international flavour, tied with the killings in London on 7/7 or New York on 9/11 – the film unmasking a vast conspiracy which has provided the motive force for several recent historical events. The film will conclude by pointing to the national government as the primary source of deception, followed by a clear reason as to why – gun control. The film will ask: “Isn’t the naval dockyard shooting just what the government needs to reignite the gun control debate?”

Finally, the film will call for political activism. “Share this information,” it will say, “this affects you”. The threat is tyranny – a dictatorship the government desires but requires an unarmed populace to install. This form of activism, in which conspiracy theory is used as a conduit through which to channel a targeted political message, requires that anyone who supports the “official version” of events are discredited by any means possible.

Shortly after the tragic events of that day, people stormed the Internet with searches on what Nostradamus might have predicted about it. Why?

It didn’t take long after the tragic events of September 11, 2001 for people to begin seeking meaning in the devastation. People logged on to the Internet and in record numbers sought information on what Nostradamus – the famed 16th century French prophet – might have predicted about the tragedy. Nostradamus is credited for predicting many other major events from his time to ours, including two world wars, so certainly he must have foreseen an event so cataclysmic and profoundly affecting as the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the thousands of deaths involved.

Over the years, people have exhausted themselves attempting to bend, twist and otherwise mutilate interpretations of Nostradamus’s quatrains into something that looks like they pertain to the September 11 tragedy. Some even made up quatrains that Nostradamus never wrote and attributed them to the great seer. The truth is, however, that none of Nostradamus’s writings quite fits. As we discussed in the article “The September 11 Tragedy: Was It Prophesied?”, Nostradamus seems, by most accounts, to have missed this one.

Not everyone agrees that Nostradamus missed this prediction. David Ovason, for one, in his book Nostradamus Prophecies for America, makes the case that Quatrain 6:97 predicts the disaster, but such interpretations can often be highly creative exercises.

Nostradamus

Why do we need Nostradamus to have said something about it? Why were people so hungry for verification from a long-dead prophet? Perhaps it’s because we need to make sense of a seemingly senseless act: If the horrific events of that day had been prophesied, then perhaps they have meaning in a grander scheme that we cannot quite comprehend. It helps us cope with the horror. If a prophecy exists regarding 9/11, this somewhat twisted thinking goes, then perhaps it was meant to be; it was the hand of fate.

I’m not saying that people consciously want to think that 9/11 was meant to be. But on some crazy level, if it was prophesied it puts a degree of order back in the universe. The insane events of that day – two airliners crashing into the twin towers, the suicide pilots who took thousands of lives along with their own, the sight of those magnificent buildings crumbling into great clouds of dust and debris, the people on the street fleeing in terror – they are all so extraordinary, so unreal and so powerfully disorienting that we had to find ways of touching reality again.

Seeking Nostradamus’s words were, for some people, a way to try to do that. A prophecy would help put meaning and order back into a world that, at that time, seemed so meaningless and chaotic.

Once one of Britain’s principal conspiracy theorists as well as friend to David Icke and Alex Jones, Charlie Veitch, was known as a 9/11 “truther.” As soon as he realized that he had been duped, he stopped. But that was when his problems really began.

According to an interview Veitch gave to the Telegraph, Veitch, who had been Right-wing, joined the Territorial Army (TA). After a drunken night out with his best friend, his friend had turned to Veitch and told him that they had been lying to him. He told Veitch that 9/11 was not what he thought it was and that he was being given “special knowledge.” Veitch’s friend went on to show him a video entitled Terrorism: A History of Government Sponsored Terror, a video that was produced by US radio talk presenter, Alex Jones.

Veitch was shortly after made redundant, so with some of his payout, he purchased a camcorder and megaphone, in the style of Alex Jones. He used eccentric methods to publicly express his beliefs, such as swooping on public spaces and embarking public transport to make announcements to whoever was available to listen. In one piece of footage, Veitch was heard to say to a group of passengers: “I am a proponent of the idea that the Twin Towers were brought down in a controlled demolition manner. Those buildings would not have collapsed in the slightest from a Boeing 767 hit.”

Veitch purchased a camcorder and megaphone, in the style of Alex Jones.

But one June afternoon, in New York City’s Times Square, Veitch began to film himself on his cell phone, as he made statements to camera about the devastation of the World Trade Center. Only this time, his message was different from all the others he had posted on Youtube. In the video, he said that he no longer believed that 9/11 was an inside job.

Because of his conspiracy theory films and the fact that he was at the forefront of what is known as “The Truth Movement” arm in the UK, Veitch had been approached by the BBC to go on an all-expenses paid 9-day trip to the United States, to examine these “conspiracies” from a scientific standpoint, with a view to furnish him with real information.

In the BBC program, entitled 9/11: Conspiracy Road Trip, 4 additional individuals, with divergent opinions from the official account of events of 9/11, had been selected to go on the road trip with Veitch.

The conspiracy theorists were given the opportunity to talk to building engineers, scientists, FBI and CIA agents, demolition experts and designers of the World Trade Center. They were also allowed to talk to relatives of those who had tragically lost their lives, as well as pay a visit to the Pentagon, the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pennsylvania United Flight 93 site.

After all of the scientific evidence was put to Veitch, he did something completely out of the ordinary for a hardcore “truther.” He did a U-turn and changed his mind. Standing in front of the White House, on that sunny day in June, Veitch spoke to the BBC presenter and road trip leader, Andrew Maxwell. In front of the BBC camera, Veitch told him:

“I found my personal truth and you don’t have to agree with me, but I can’t push propaganda for ideas that I no longer believe in and that’s what I do, so I just need to basically… take it on the chin, admit I was wrong, be humble about it and just carry on.”

Before the end of his road trip, Charlie Veitch held up his cell phone in the middle of Times Square, pointed the phone’s camera on himself and told the world that he had changed his mind, that he had been wrong. He said:

“This universe is truly one of smoke screens, illusions and wrong paths, but also the right path, which is [to] always be committed to the truth. Do not hold on to religious dogma. If you are presented with new evidence, take it on, even if it contradicts what you or your group might be believing or wanting to believe… you have to give the truth the greatest respect… and I do.”

Veitch’s turning point piece-to-camera at Times Square

After Veitch posted his video, the 9/11 Truth Movement’s reaction to one of its most prominent “truthers” changing his mind was one to be expected. Veitch was labeled a flip-flop, a shill sellout who was taking cash for working for the BBC. The Truth Movement did what any organization of its kind would do to someone who, for want of a better term, came to their senses. They tried to discredit him.

Veitch told Myles Power in his BBC-funded interview, how he once had too much time on his hands, “Idle hands are the conspiracy theory world’s ideal way to get into your head,” he said, as he described how he started to watch Alex Jones and David Icke documentaries, as well as other scientific theory videos which he said spun a pretty convincing yarn on its conspiracies. He became convinced that the Illuminati were behind it all, with its so-called New World Order. After becoming absorbed by his interest in conspiracy theories, he took up his megaphone and camera and began to make films about them, which he said, elevated him to a “high priest” status of the Truth Movement.

I will do my best to make the occasional post, but just in case i’m a little less attentive than usual or a little slower with the posts, you’ll know why. I wouldn’t want you to think i was abducted by aliens or anything. ;)

I’ll be back in action right about September 22nd!!!!

In the mean time, check out the iLLumiNuTTi facebook page from time to time. Even though i’ll be away from my computer, we have other contributors posting over at facebook to pick up some of the slack.

While I did touch upon ten of what I considered to be biggest lies, I still felt there were more lies that people in the 9/11 Truth Movement promoted that still needed to be addressed.

So, I have put together another list of ten more lies that Truther tells:

10. Nothing hit World Trade Center 7.

Actually something did hit World Trade Center 7… a skyscraper.

To be more precise falling debris from World Trade Center 1 hit World Trade Center 7 and caused huge amounts of damage to the lower floors of the building. The combination of that, and the fact that the building had been on fire for hours caused the building to collapse.

9. Only two buildings were hit, but three were destroyed.

This is not true. In fact more than three building were destroyed that day. World Trade Center 3, 4, 5, and 6 were heavily damaged that day and what was left of them had to be torn down because they could not be repaired.

Also, many other buildings around the World Trade Center were damaged as well.

8. A nuclear bomb brought down the towers.

If this was true then this would be the easiest one to prove, as all you would have to do is go down to the World Trade Center site with a Geiger counter and one would easily find large amounts of radiation there.

Also, lower Manhattan would be uninhabitable right now due to that radiation, plus the destruction caused would have been far greater, and a lot more people would have died, either from the initial blast from the weapon, or from the radiation and radioactive fall out.

Plus, there would have been an obvious flash some what similar to the Sun when the device went, and there would have been no way to hide that.

7. The towers were reduced to dust and gravel.

Primarily promoted by followers of Judy Wood and those that believe in her theory that the towers were brought down high energy lasers, their claims are that the towers were reduced to dust and gravel by these alleged lasers.

While the collapse of the towers did create a lot of dust and gravel, it also left large chunks of concrete, long pieces of steel beams, and even places where pieces of the outer wall several stories high still stood.

6. Israel did it.

Besides the fact that there is no evidence what so ever that Israel did this, the fact is that Israel had no reason to do something like this.

The United States is Israel’s biggest supporter, and President George W. Bush was one of Israel’s strongest supporters at that.

To simply put, the people in charge of Israel would have had to have lost their minds to have done something like that. Not only would they have been risking losing support from the United States, but also risked going war with the United States in order to get more support from the United States.

An eastern Oklahoma man’s death in February has been ruled the result of a heart attack, after the county sheriff initially said he believed spontaneous human combustion was to blame, according to the medical examiner’s report released Tuesday.

Danny Vanzandt, 65, of Muldrow, likely died of a heart attack after which his body was burned, possibly by a cigarette, the report states.

“The lack of soot within the airway and a negative carboxyhemoglobin level within the procured blood sample suggests death prior to the fire,” the medical examiner’s report states. “These findings are not consistent with someone breathing in smoke in the moments preceding death.

“The findings of the examination are most consistent with the decendent dying (likely of this heart condition) and then being involved posthumously in the fire which consumed most of his body,” the report states.

Danny Vanzandt, 65, was found dead and burned at his home in Muldrow, Oklahoma.

Vanzandt’s body was almost completely consumed by fire before being found. His body weight at the medical examiner’s office came in at 40 pounds, according to the autopsy report.

Vanzandt’s charred body was found in his home on South 4700 Road on Feb. 18. At the time, Sequoyah County Sheriff Ron Lockhart said the signs pointed to spontaneous human combustion as the cause of death, since no nearby items or furniture around the body were burned.

There was no other fire damage to the house and no signs of a struggle, Lockhart said.

“One plausible scenario involves the decedent collapsing and dying (likely due to the coronary artery disease noted at autopsy) on the kitchen floor at which time a lit cigarette ignites the decedent’s clothing and burns long enough to split the skin and release adipose tissue onto the clothing and floor and this adipose tissue then becomes the primary fuel source for the fire,” the report states.

A serious video: The “unexplainable” collapse of 7 World Trade Center is the most compelling case put forth by 9/11 Truthers. But there is more than enough evidence that WTC7 collapsed due to fire — no secret demolition ninjas necessary.

The text below is for people interested in actual inquiry, and are legitimately examining both sides’ arguments for inconsistencies, intellectual dishonesty, and logical flaws.

The 1,500 “experts” at ae911truth.org are mostly electrical and chemical engineers, residential architects, students, etc. with little or no experience in steel skyscraper construction.

The NIST study was done in cooperation with the SEI/ASCE, SFPE, AISC, and SEAoNY — actual engineering experts in the field, all of whom would have to be in on this conspiracy, even to this day.

The “explosive traces” or “thermite” claim comes from non-chemist Steven E. Jones, who analyzed samples sent to him privately with no chain of custody. His paper appeared in a journal that charges $800 to publish; Google “CRAP Paper Accepted by Journal” to read about its “peer review” process. Jones, a devout Mormon, also published “evidence” that Jesus visited American Indians; Google “Behold My Hands.”

No “molten metal” was ever collected from WTC7 and analyzed.

Rigging a large building for demolition cannot be done “over the weekend,” nor would such preparation escape the notice of office workers. Demolition professionals laugh at this claim.

Through my studying of conspiracy theories I have found that many of them are easy to dis-prove. In fact some of them are so easy to dis-prove that it’s actually kind of shocking that anyone believes in them.

Now despite the fact that most conspiracy theories are quite easy to dis-prove, a few of them could actually be proven, and quite easily at that, if a conspiracy theorist was willing to spend the and money to try to prove what they believe is real.

The following is a list of five different conspiracy theories that I feel could be easy to prove:

Despite the overwhelming evidence that the moon landings did happen and that we really did send 12 men to the surface of the moon and back between 1969 to 1972, many conspiracy theorists still insistence that the landings were all faked, and that they were all filmed on some movie set in on a military base in the middle of the desert.

Despite the multiple pieces of “evidence” that they believe prove that the moon landings were faked, they have not produce one shred of evidence that hasn’t ended up being debunked.

Now, despite the fact that all the evidence that they claim proves the moon landings were hoaxed have been debunked, there are actually a few simple (but expensive) ways for them to prove the moon landings were hoaxed:

First, they could build their own telescope that is powerful enough to see close up to the surface of the moon, and look at the moon landing sites to see if anything is there.

Second, build your own satellite and rocket that can travel to the moon and photograph the sites where the moon landings were suppose to be.

Third, build a space ship that can actually get to the moon, land at the sites, and see for yourself if anything is ther. Oh, and here is the bonus part about this one: If it turns out that you’re right, and you prove that the moon landing were faked, “you” become known as the first person to walk on the moon!

Among some conspiracy theorists there is this belief that the government is using aircraft to spray the population with chemicals to either dumb us down, or make us sick, or make us infertile (assuming it’s not for geo-engineering like other chemtrail conspiracy theorists are insisting).

Of course there is no evidence what so ever to prove these claims (despite what they insist) but, there is in fact a very easy way for them to prove that chemtrails are real.

All they would have to do is get a plane, attach a scope or two to that plane (be sure they are the types that remotely open and shut in order to avoid contamination) fly through an alleged chemtrail (actually you might want to do this several times in order to collect several samples, just to be sure) take the samples you’ve gotten, and have them tested to see whats in them, and how high the concentrations are (because that plays a big factor too).

Now, if this is done, one of two things will happen: You and many other conspiracy theorists will be proven to be right, and all skeptics will have to eat their own words (during the revolution that would most likely follow) or, you will be proven to be wrong, and it will be shown that chemtrails are in fact nothing more than water vapor.

Turn out the lights and link your hands, for today we’re going to hold a seance and contact the dead, and have them perform parlor tricks for us in the dark. We’re going to look at the Scole Experiment, a large, well-organized series of seances conducted by members of the Society for Psychical Research in the late 1990’s in Scole, a small village in England. Reported phenomena included ghostly lights flitting about the room, images appearing on film inside secure containers, reports of touches from unseen hands, levitation of the table, and disembodied voices. Due to the large number of investigators and sitters involved, the number and consistency of paranormal episodes observed during the seances, and the lack of any finding of fraud, many believers often point to the Scole Experiment as the best scientific evidence that spirits do survive in the afterlife, and can and do come back and interact with the living, demonstrating an impressive array of conjuring powers.

There were a total of six mediums and fifteen investigators from the SPR. The Society for Psychical Research, or SPR, is based in London and is more than a century old. Its membership consists of enthusiasts of the paranormal. The authoritative source for what happened in the Scole Experiment is a report several hundred pages long, called The Scole Report, originally published in the journal Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and written by three of the lead investigators who were present at the sittings, all current or former senior officers of the SPR: plant scientist Montague Keen, electrical engineer Arthur Ellison, and psychologist David Fontana. I have a copy here on my desk. It goes through the history of how the experiments came together, details each of the many seances, and presents analysis and criticism from a number of the SPR investigators who observed.

Unfortunately, the Scole Experiment was tainted by profound investigative failings. In short, the investigators imposed little or no controls or restrictions upon the mediums, and at the same time, agreed to all of the restrictions imposed by the mediums. The mediums were in control of the seances, not the investigators. What the Scole Report authors describe as a scientific investigation of the phenomena, was in fact (by any reasonable interpretation of the scientific method) hampered by a set of rules which explicitly prevented any scientific investigation of the phenomena.

The primary control offered by the mediums was their use of luminous wristbands, to show the sitters that their hands were not moving about during the seances. I consulted with Mark Edward, a friend in Los Angeles who gives mentalism and seance performances professionally. He knows all the tricks, and luminous wristbands are, apparently, one of the tricks. There are any number of ways that a medium can get into and out of luminous wristbands during a seance. The wristbands used at Scole were made and provided by the mediums themselves, and were never subjected to testing, which is a gross dereliction of control by the investigators. Without having been at the Scole Experiment in person, Mark couldn’t speculate on what those mediums may have done or how they may have done it. Suffice it to say that professional seance performers are not in the least bit impressed by this so-called control. Tricks like this have been part of the game for more than a century. Since hand holding was not employed in the Scole seances, the mediums effectively had every opportunity to be completely hands free and do whatever they wanted to do.

…the clock is ticking on a satellite era record for the latest ever Atlantic hurricane formation.

Atlantic hurricane season – a record-breaking dud?

(Reuters) – The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters had predicted would be more active than normal, has turned out to be something of a dud so far as an unusual calm hangs over the tropics.

As the season heads into the historic peak for activity, it may even enter the record books as marking the quietest start to any Atlantic hurricane season in decades.

What it really is:Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is used by the US Navy for remodeling and repairing submarines. The shipyard is also used by the Coast Guard as a home port for several cutters.The shipyard is also registered as a National Historical Place.

What it really is:Barksdale Air Force Base is an Air Force Base located right next to Bossier City, LA. which would make it difficult to hide a prison camp from the public. Also looking at the base via Google Maps I could not find anything that would not be found on a typical Air Force base.The base itself has several bomber squadrons, so having such weapons there wouldn’t be that unusual either.

What it really is: The actual name for the facility is VLF Transmitter Cutler. The facility is a very low frequency shore radio station used by the Navy to provide one-way communications with submarines.The facility itself has two identical umbrella arrays. The reason for this is because if one has to be taken offline for repairs and maintenance, the other one can remain operational.

What it really is:Schilling Air Force Base was closed 1965 with the only military presence left being the Kansas Air National Guard whom still uses the bombing range and some of the buildings.The former base is now a quiet place that houses a few private businesses, as well as Kansas State University at Salina and Salina Area Technical College